Alfa GTV6 Clutch Change

Well, I hadn’t planned on doing this task for a long while as my car has low mileage, but either using the GTV to pull my FIAT with a stuck brake caliper or grease gumming up on the input shaft, throwout bearing support (or a combination of the two) lead to its early demise. I will share with you how to go about removing and replacing the unit without the benefit of a nice shop or hoist that I see in a lot of posts. (I could have gone to my local British car club and used the hoist, but I think they tire of me working on everything but my MG there!)

Step one is getting the car up in the air and safe to be under. Place a trolly jack under the DeDion tube where the Watts linkage is located

and raise the car up to place the stands. Use the factory jack point to locate the stand.

Take your time lowering the car as you will have to adjust the stands as the car rolls forward. Once everything is stable get under the car and remove the exhaust center section and (if your lucky enough to have a car that allows it) the center cross member.

(Cars ’83 and earlier have a center member that is welded in which makes things a bit more difficult. In this case remove the catalytic converter as well.) Next remove the gear shift rod from the lever in the center tunnel. Pull the boot back and remove the nut and bolt. (If your shift lever has been buzzing on the highway now is a good time to replace the bushing in the bottom of the lever!)

Next remove the two nuts holding the prop shaft center bearing in place.

Now here comes the part where you have to be very careful and think about spacial relations. The three bolts securing the rear guibo to the gearbox yolk need to be removed. To do this the prop shaft (and this also means the engine) need to be rotated. It must only be rotated in the direction of operation or else you may cause the belt to slacken as the tensioner only really likes to work one way. One tooth is all it takes to start causing major damage. I won’t get into CW or CCW because it can get confusing depending on how you’ve situated yourself under the car. I will give this advise, no matter how you’re looking at the shaft, when you turn it swing your wrench under the shaft towards the right side of the car. Two 19MM wrenches will do the trick undoing the bolts.

Once the rear guibo is free, we can start on the gearbox itself!

To get the gearbox into a position where you can remove the clutch is fairly easy. First remove the reverse and speedometer sending leads, then remove the six bolts holding the crossmember to the body.

If you want to support it with a jack, feel free but it actually seems to defy gravity and will not fall! You will need to start jacking on the DeDion tube again and the nose of the gearbox will start to drop. Once it is low enough to reach the selector rod roll pin

and gearbox isolator bolts

remove them in that order. Just be ready with a heavy mallet as the roll pin is in pretty tight! Now that the nose of the gearbox is free you need another jack to lift it up. The crossmember should be nearly on the ground which will give you plenty of room to remove the clutch unit.

Loosed the clutch slave and withdraw the fork now only four more bolts and it’s away!

Here’s where I ran into trouble. I had fully expected the P.O. had swapped the clutch for the current Milano/75 single disc setup so I had ordered a single disc. Alas, I still had (probably the last person on the planet BTW) the dual disc clutch so I considered my options. $1075 for a new clutch unit (which isn’t available right now) or get the discs relined. (Here are what they look like side by side. Left is the Milano/75 and right are mine after relining.)

I immediately started looking for a shop and found Brake and Equipment in Milwaukee Wisconsin. After phoning them up I took the disc down the following evening. Here it all is laid out on the bench at their shop.

Notice how the front disc still has the screen printing nice and white even though the friction surface was starting to glaze? Got a call a the next day saying they couldn’t do it as they were set up for large industrial equipment bet their receptionist/parts lady Melissa knew someone who could. (An apparent wizard if I recall correctly!) So off they went to Kirby at Unique Automotive in Jonesburg Missouri. She sent them on a Friday morning and they were back on Tuesday or Wednesday. So another drive to collect them! (Maiden long distance road trip for my Hornet BTW! 170 miles round trip!)

Now on to assembly of the clutch unit now that the discs are back in my paws. (The flywheel and pressure plates look horrible, but not so much. I was only really worried about the rear plate causing chatter as it had some minor scoring from the rear disc. I did not want to let my unobtainable parts out of my possession for resurfacing though. As it turns out everything is smooth as silk.) I had placed the input shaft and flywheel into a bucket to serve as my workbench. A nice coating of grease is applied to the roller bearings

and then the surface wiped clean as you wouldn’t want it slung onto your friction surfaces.

(Which all four were cleaned with brake cleaner and the glaze broken with a wire wheel.)

Next place your front disc onto the flywheel after applying grease to the splines.

Next comes the intermediate pressure plate

taking note of the gap under the spring.

Next mount the rear plate, thread all six bolts into the holes to keep everything lined up. (The clutch components are marked as it is a balanced assembly, the flywheel however wasn’t marked so I used a dab of paint on disassembly.

) Using a block of wood and a hammer tap the intermediate pressure plate into place and remove the bolts.

and insert your alignment tool. (I had to pop the ring out of the end as it wouldn’t let the tool go past the throwout bearing.)

Now the rear pressure plate can be installed and torqued per the FSM.

The spring on the intermediate pressure plate should now look like this,

and the button on the rear pressure plate should be standing proud of the surface

with alignment marks in order.

then reach in and withdraw your alignment tool.

If everything is square it should slide right out.

Now it’s down to reassembly. All I can say is what the Haynes manuals says. “Assembly is reverse of disassembly.” Just watch these few items though. Grease you clutch fork and pivot ball

along with the input shaft and sliding surfaces of the throwout bearing

before bolting the clutch unit back on. (Use anti seize on the bolt nearest the exhaust as it does get hot.

Mine was stuck pretty well!) Also when reinstalling the crossmember to body bolts, use one of the four tapered bolts that wants to find a home and work from there leaving the two front bolts for last. (You don’t want to try putting them in like this

as stripping the mounting holes would be a nightmare!!) After driving around for a few days retorque the crossmember bolts.

I would like to extend a very deserved and heartfelt “Thank you!” to Melissa at Brake and Equipment and Kirby at Unique Automotive for helping me keep my car on the road with all the parts it left the factory with. You guys saved the day and everything works like a dream!!! (At the total cost of $115 dollars no less!) Thanks a bunch!

Well there is one guy I’ve gone to and he’s very resonable. He did the clutch change on my red 164 for less than $700. (I’ve also done that job twice on my black 164 the second time took me around 8 hours, the first time about double that.) My total time on the GTV6 is around four hours and that includes all the photography. The labor at his rate would’ve been fairly low but he would’ve installed a new clutch assembly. The problem is he’s over 100 miles away so I’ve had to do everything myself. Fortunately I have the factory service manuals for the GTV6 and 164. (And for the 164 the electrical manual is a must!)

I had a Ducati once that had exactly this problem that you called “glazing”. Your picture shows it very well.
Removing these glazes with a wire wheel solved the problem for a while, but it came back quickly. I later on replaced the clutch cover by an opened one and cleaned the clutch with air pressure from time to time which solved the problem in a way that disassembling and cleaning the disks was only necessary once a year.